AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT:
BARBARA SEAGRAM
Master Point Press publishes the work of many terrific bridge writers, and we would like you to get to know some of them a little better. This month, we will focus on the illustrious writer and teacher, Barbara Seagram.
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FEATURED TEACHER: Bobbie Gomer
Our ABTA award nominee this month is Willow Grove, Pennsylvania-based Bobbie Gomer. Bobbie has been teaching bridge since 1995, and is particularly revered among her students as a "bridge matchmaker".
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FEATURED TEACHER: Kathy Rolfe
In the months leading up to the first ABTA Master Point Press Teacher of the Year award, Mastering Bridge thought you might like to meet some of the teachers being nominated.
First up is Missouri’s Kathy Rolfe. For eight years, Kathy has taught middle and high school students in multiple districts of Missouri. An electrical engineer by trade, Kathy didn’t participate in her first duplicate game until 2001, but was playing bridge long before then.
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FEATURED TEACHER: Kathie Macnab
Kathie Macnab is an entrepreneur. In 1998 the Halifax resident, alongside business partner and bridge teacher Balon Buckley, started the Bridge Studio, the city’s second bridge club and its first with an open-door policy toward new players. Kathie has been teaching bridge since the late 1980s and acquired certification from the ACBL, Better Bridge and most recently was awarded the ABTA Master Teacher certification. She is the also the only Master Teacher in Eastern Canada.
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FEATURED TEACHERS: Chuck and Carolyn Hodel
Chuck and Carolyn Hodel began playing bridge during their 51-year marriage’s early years, and became ardent duplicate players around 1980. In 1981 they moved to Chico, California, “a small agricultural community with a university,” Chuck says. Carolyn and Chuck became life masters in 1992 and started teaching bridge together at the same time.
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AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Paul Thurston
Paul Thurston is an old hand at the bridge writing game – an avid player since high school, he’s been writing about and teaching bridge for over 40 years. As an author, he’s recently become known for his book 25 Ways to Win 2 Over 1. Some of his lessons on the 2 Over 1 bidding system will be appearing on Mastering Bridge over the next month; in the meantime, we thought you might like to know more about the author.
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FEATURED TEACHER: Patty Tucker
Patty Tucker learned to play bridge at 11, and was competing in her first tournament at 12. It will probably come as no surprise, then, that this Alabama native began teaching bridge in her early 20s, though she didn't begin teaching full time until 13 years ago.
Notable among Patty’s achievements is the Atlanta Junior Bridge program, which teaches bridge to children in metro Atlanta for free, and which she started three years ago with “some other local teachers and friends.”
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TRUMP INDICATORS - SOME OF MY FAVORITES
Many of you have a favorite deck of cards or even several decks which I’m sure give you a great deal of pleasure every time you look at them. I often find myself looking at my collection of trump indicators and cannot describe the joy I derive from it. I never tire of viewing it, appreciating the diversity and creativity of the many pieces.
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FEATURED TEACHER: Gloria Weissman
Born in San Antonio, Texas, Gloria Weissman moved to Sacramento, California while still in elementary school. She later owned a bridge club in Sacramento called “The Double Dummy,” for many years wrote a bridge column in The Sacramento Bee.
She lives in Naples, where she teaches during the winter, and can usually be found on bridge cruises during the summer. “I love to teach,” she says. “It’s something I’ve always loved.”
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Copy Right
I am often asked by bridge teachers what they can and cannot do with published material in the classroom. Their intended uses run from using an example deal out of a book in a lesson through to photocopying chapter summaries and quizzes to use as handouts. When a teacher asks us for permission to do something like the latter, we look at every case on its own merits and try to be accommodating. However, let me give you some broad guidelines, and (I hope) answer some of the most common questions.
FEATURED TEACHER: Ed O’Reilly
Few bridge players have trained as many young people as Ed O'Reilly.
In the early 1990s the Kingston, Ontario-based club owner began teaching bridge during class hours to students in elementary and middle school. His lessons became so popular - at one time he was told that more youth were learning bridge at school in Kingston than in the rest of North America combined - that he received calls from locations as far-flung as Hawaii, San Diego, and Austin, Texas, asking how he had accomplished it.
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WHAT'S THE SCORE? THE T.I.’S KNOW
Playing card collectors often forget that card games, especially those of the past, required not only a deck of cards, but other highly collectible items like rule books, score pads, card tables, card shufflers, pencils, tablecloths, markers, and... trump indicators.
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FEATURED TEACHER:
Jerry Helms
Jerry is a professional bridge player, writer and teacher, who specializes in group seminars. He is a native of Charlotte, N. C. where he still lives with his wife, Gini. As a player, Jerry has appeared 23 consecutive times on the annual American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) “Top 500” list.
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A Motto to Live By
Left: This proverb is engraved on a wooden trump indicator 4 inches long and 3 ½ high with a diamond shaped wooden insert that rotates at the top to indicate the trump suit.
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What's Trump?
Both Linda Lee and Nick Fahrer have blogged recently about bridge ephemera – curiosities and collectibles related to the game in some way. On of the first things I saw when we arrived here at the Nationals in Boston was a display of trump indicators.
Trump indicators date back to whist, a game in which sometimes the last card dealt was turned up as trumps, or in some forms of the game the deck was cut to decide trumps before the deal. The result was that it was quite easy to forget what the trump suit actually was. In early forms of bridge, trump indicators continued to be useful too.
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FEATURED TEACHER: Linda J Green
When Linda represented South Africa in the World Bridge Olympics 1980 in Valkenburg, Holland, bridge took over her life. Prior to this event, she was working as a Chief Medical Technologist in Clinical Pathology running a laboratory for a children's hospital in Johannesburg.
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FEATURED TEACHER: Hazel Wolpert
Hazel Wolpert is the owner of one of the largest bridge clubs in Toronto. While she has done a great deal of teaching in the past, running her busy bridge club is keeping her on her toes. She continues to mentor her bridge students and also is still very active in the bridge community.
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Why Not Try a Different Approach: Scoring
Scoring
Now that you have the basics under control, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. In bridge, we do that by keeping score in points, and assigning a monetary value to a point. Some folks play for a dollar or more a point. Others (like me) prefer lower stakes like a tenth of a cent up to a penny a point. Generally, play very light stakes at first, then graduate to a stake which makes you pay attention to what you are doing. If it hurts a little to lose a rubber, you are at the right level. But, like in poker or any other form of wagering, don't play for more than you can afford to lose, because even though this is a game of skill there are still elements of luck that can bite you.
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FEATURED TEACHER: LESLIE SHAFER
Interviewed by James Howick
December 2, 2008
Leslie Shafer and her husband Charlie Williams are both certified ACBL Accredited Teachers, and have been teaching bridge for over ten years. Leslie and Charlie have been publishing Bridge Students 'R Us, a bridge student newsletter, for over six years.
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THIS MONTH'S SPECIAL
Buy the Playing Cards for Barbara Seagram's Beginning Bridge for just US$8 and get a copy of the book absolutely free! We'll even cover the shipping and handling charges.
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Why Not Try a Different Approach: The Auction
This is continuation of my article "Why Not Try a Different Approach?" posted on this site in early October, 2008.
The defenders have been a patient lot. Dealer and dealer's partner have been having all the fun choosing the trump suit or perhaps no trump at all. Ah, but now the defenders get their revenge, because we are going to fight about who gets to be declarer with which suit as trump. What you need to know here is that the possibilities are ranked in order, with clubs being lowest, then diamonds, then hearts, then spades, and finally notrump as the highest-ranked possibility. Don't worry, now comes the example which will clear things up for you. Cut for partners and let's start another chukker.
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TIPS FOR TEACHING ABOARD CRUISE SHIPS (PART II)
LESSON 2: Defence against notrump
First hand is Eddie and Marty Bergen's. They love this one
Rule of eleven
♠K53 ♥QJ9 ♦Q32 ♣K543
| ♠Q1087 ♥52 ♦764 ♣10862 | | ♠AJ92 ♥A643 ♦J98 ♣J7 |
♠64 ♥K1087 ♦AK105 ♣AQ9
The contract is 3NT. Declarer is South.
West leads the seven of spades
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Why Not Try a Different Approach: Playing with a Trump Suit
This is continuation of my article "Why Not Try a Different Approach?" posted on this site in early October, 2008.
Playing with a Trump Suit
The auction component of contract bridge is really fun. Both sides use a coded language to bid for control of the hand. When the smoke clears, one side is victorious, having "bought" the contract, and is considered to be on offense in the hand. The other side defends, trying to prevent the declarer from doing what his side promised to do. When the defenders are successful in that mission, the contract fails (goes down), and the defenders have successfully defended and "set" the contract. Defense is a critical part of the game, and an area worthy of extended study — but not at the moment.
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FEATURED TEACHER: MARTI RONEMUS
Marti Ronemus is a Star Bridge teacher and owner of the Bridge Boardroom in York, Pennsylvannia. Marti is also an ACBL Celebrity speaker, ACBL Bulletin columnist, and writer for several other publications. Mastering Bridge is thrilled to have Marti as November's Featured Teacher.
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TIPS FOR TEACHING ABOARD CRUISE SHIPS
WHO TO CONTACT
- Sixth Star Entertainment and Marketing | www.sixthstar.com
21 NW 5th Street
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Maria Maxwell 954-462-6760 Ext # 232
maria@sixthstar.com
Sixth Star has:
- Seabourn
- Orient Cruise Line
- Marco Polo
- Princess (some ships)
- Royal Caribbean
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Why Not Try a Different Approach?
This is an excerpt adapted from my unfinished work Simplicity Bridge. The idea is to start students playing some form of the game immediately, then give them a way to actually play rubber bridge, Cavendish (rather than Chicago) four-deal style, with honors added back in. Target group is NOT duplicate players, but rather new young (15-40) players, especially college and post grad types. This first chapter builds on the Mini-Bridge concept and takes it to a full auction. It is my opinion that if we don't bring back simple methods money rubber bridge, our sport is doomed in America at least. If we re-build a solid foundation of rubber players, 10-20 percent will ultimately venture into and enjoy duplicate.
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LONG SUIT VERSUS SHORT SUIT COUNTING
When we started to write Beginning Bridge it seemed clear that there was less than 100% agreement on which method of counting distribution was better. A majority of teachers now seem to use long suit counting. However, the older method of short suit counting is still used by some. Not only that, but a fair number of students who have had some acquaintance with bridge learned to count short suits. We felt both methods deserved equal treatment in the book.
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RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL NOVICE/INTERMEDIATE PROGRAM AT A CLUB
The following are just my thoughts. Remember first and foremost that you have to be quite mad to even dream about running a bridge club in the first place; the revenue per square foot (and you need lots of space) never is enough, the expenses are high and the workload enormous. My husband and I each work 18 hours of every single day. The desks never clear! You will never get rich doing it but on a scale of job satisfaction, I reckon it's a 10 out of 10. I feel sure that most of you have thought of much of this already but I am just going to roll it into my nutshell anyway.
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CLASSIC CLASSROOM MOMENTS
I give a lesson on preemptive bidding and then call off a hand. The class divides the cards. The South hand is supposed to have seven hearts, but North winds up with the seven hearts and 20 cards and South winds up with 6 cards. South calls me over and says: "Mr. Kantar, I have never seen a hand like this before." But she is happy because she likes to count points for short suits. North, on the other hand, is having trouble holding on to all 20 cards and they are falling over the place. But North is even happier than South because North likes to count extra points for long suits!
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TEACHING WITH BEGINNING BRIDGE
Beginning Bridge is meant for students who have never played bridge or a similar card game. By the end of the book students should be able to enjoy playing bridge with their friends. There are eleven chapters in the book. Each chapter includes a section on bidding, a section on play, exercises to illustrate new concepts, four practice deals.
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FEATURED TEACHER: MAGGIE SPARROW
A mistake is a lesson on the way to being learned. Maggie Sparrow is a Star Bridge Teacher who coordinates online chats for the American Bridge Teachers' Association and is the moderator for the Mastering Bridge teachers' forum. Maggie lives in Hillsdale, Ontario, a town about an hour and a half drive from Toronto.
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